Number of women travelling to America to choose sex of child rises 20%

Hundreds of British couples are having IVF treatment in America to select the
gender of their child, a leading doctor has said, with a 20 per cent rise in
patients travelling year on year.

Dr Daniel Potter's patients often do not need fertility treatment in order to conceive but go through the process so that the resulting embryos can be screened and the chosen sex transferred to the womb

Dr Potter who runs the HRC clinic in Newport Beach in California, said 80 per cent of couples from Britain are choosing to have a girl.

It had been feared that allowing sex selection would lead to an imbalance between the genders with fewer girls born for cultural reasons.

However Dr Potter said the women he sees are desperate for a girl having grown up playing with dolls and always imagined they would have daughter.

He told the Telegraph: "Some have only one child but most have two or three of the same gender. The process is driven by the mother who has identified with little girls since her own childhood and has always had a place for a daughter. When they do not have one, it is like a death and they grieve for their little girl."

Dr Potter's patients often do not need fertility treatment in order to conceive but go through the process so that the resulting embryos can be screened and the chosen sex transferred to the womb.

The whole process costs around US$15,000 and requires a 12 day stay near the clinic.

Dr Potter said: "I think that pregnancy termination as a method of gender selection is not acceptable but I also believe that is it not for me to impose my values on other people.

"I believe women should have reproductive freedom and that should include selecting the gender of their child if they wish. But in countries like the UK where the government pays for some IVF, taxpayers' money should not be used to people can have a boy or a girl because that is what they want. That is inappropriate.

"I have had patients come to me from the other side of the world who have never been on a plane before and have saved up for a long time, it is really very important to them."

He said the arguments against sex selection using IVF were mostly 'absurd' and focus on it 'interfering with God's will' or somehow sexually discriminating against the embryo.

One in ten of Dr Potter's patients are now seen for gender selection with the largest numbers of couples from outside America coming from Australia, the UK and Canada. In these countries, most couples want a girl, he said.

Some patients travel from China wanting to have a boy but many also want twins, with one of each sex.

One British patient who asked to be known only as Hayley said: "I’d always wanted a little girl but logistically, we didn’t want lots of children, we only wanted three, so we though we’d go down this route.

“My husband said “you can have one more baby” at which point I said, if I’m having one more I’ll make sure it’s a girl.

“I just think I’ve always wanted a mother daughter relationship. Not to take away from what I have with my sons which is lovely.”

Hayley and her husband Greg already had two boys, Bobby, six and Christopher, four. After searching the Internet, Hayley found lots of couples were looking for the same, and had coined the phrase, 'gender dreaming'.

She said: “It took a lot of soul searching to go to the US to be honest – it took us a long time and we had to do lots of talking before we decided.

“Dr Potter was fantastic right from the care you receive in the UK. He was reassuring, really professional and everything you could want.”

“Of the eggs we created, we had 6 healthy embryos, 3 girls, 3 boys.”

Hayley chose to have one female implanted, which led to a successful pregnancy.

“I still can’t quite believe it, I’ll believe it when she’s here.

“The remaining embryos are frozen, they’ll probably remain frozen for a while. At some point we’ll make a decision, and I’m not sure what they decision will be.”

“We spent £22,000 on treatment but we never think about the cost, it was worth every penny.”

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority which regulates fertility treatment in Britain carried out a review of sex selection in 1993 and again in 2002. Sex selection for social or family balancing reasons is illegal under the amended HFE Act which came into force in 2009.